The Big Winter Chill

So it's been getting a little cool in Melbourne. temperatures around 12 during the day and half that at night. The heater has been getting a bit of a workout, and all seems to be good!



Some observations on planning heating in your new house;

• We upgraded to a dual zone heater with a better gas efficiency rating. We can heat the whole house, or just downstairs. For a while we were just heating downstairs, but then our master bedroom is an absolute fridge, so we're back to heating the whole house instead of using zones. Might be more useful in a single storey house to have zoned heatin.
• In the rooms which aren't used much, we've closed off the heating vents and shut the doors if these rooms have one. We also added a big sliding door between the open plan living area and the front of the house, which keeps that area nice and warm! If you're planning your house design, think of adding cavity doors in places. Open plan areas look great in display homes, but in a real-life home, you will want to close off areas for noise, heating/cooling etc. Cavity doors almost disappear into the walls when not used, but are effective in closing off areas when needed.
  
• We set the temperature around 19-20, sometimes 21 for a while if it's really cold.
• The last gas bill was about $100 I think, not too bad! Our energy rating turned out to be just over 5 star. We have put roller blinds over most of the windows, if we used heavy drapes or curtains, I think that would keep the heat in better.
  
• Might have been nice to add a heating outlet in our large ensuite, though we're planning to put in a 3-in-1 like an IXL or equivalent once we choose what light fittings to be put in (still haven't got around to that!)

On that note, does anyone have any recommendations for lighting shops in Melbourne? Apart from Beacon there doesn't seem to be much else. Maybe head back to my favourite shop, eBay :)

T&T

Day 100: Tragedy!#@$$!!@!!!

Erm... well, not really :) April fools day, right? Also Day 100 of the build. Lots of pictures in this blog post!

I was all set to go home without visiting the site, as I thought there wouldn't have been anything done - I mean, it's the day before the Easter long weekend, what self-respecting tradie would bother working on a day like today? But when I checked in with Tina, she was all excited..
"I'm up on the scaffolding... there's been heaps of work done!" - well of course I had to see what the fuss was about!

Today's Work #1: Brickies on site early, again! They weren't meant to be back until after Easter, but they were hard at it today! The balcony is starting to take shape, with the lintels all installed and a few courses of bricks put up. Also, the west side ground floor bricking has been completed, though it's hard to get a look with the scaffolding in the way.


Plus the rear bipart door and home theatre window bricking over has been done too. Ground floor bricking, all done!


Today's Work #2: First floor has been wrapped all the way around. We're now pretty well protected from the elements! See first picture.

Today's Work #3: The heating unit has been installed, and a whole bunch of heating ducts have been run through the roof and through to the ground floor! No idea how they managed to get such a huge unit in the house and up into the roof cavity.


Next picture shows another view of the gas unit sitting on some wood in the roof cavity, and a bunch more pipes. Very interesting in how the pipes are run through spaces in the frame to get to the ground floor!


Today's Work #4: Chippies have been through the house, planing the studs and adding packing - this is to make sure the stud walls are as vertical as possible so that the plaster goes on straight. No pics of this today (maybe tomorrow)!

Today's Work #5: This may have been a few days ago, but when we were up on the top level of scaffolding checking out the solar panel, we also saw our aerial perched at the very apex of the roof. Nice! And looking to the right, you can see the solar panel that has been installed up on the roof, connecting to the hot water service, also installed in the last few days.


It's incredible seeing the amount of work being done in just one day - good organisation by our SS! She didn't call us this week; probably because she was too busy calling tradies in, and that's fine by us! Hopefully the first floor bricking and cladding will be complete in the next few weeks; though there's quite a bit of work for the garage to be done (putting up the garage roof, trusses and tiling). Hoping to be at lockup stage by the end of April, and maybe we'll dare to ask our SS when she reckons everything will be complete!

Happy Easter everyone!

T&T